As some of you may know, I’ve been involved in blending tobacco for nearly 40 years, and I can remember to this day the first time I opened a package of Perique and smelled it. The deep, dark, fruity aroma hit me like a ton of bricks, and I salivated from the intensity of it. […]

A customer wrote and asked me to write about pipe cleaning basics. I’ve written recently about what you shouldn’t attempt, now let’s look at an everyday cleaning. For the sake of covering all our bases, we’re going to approach this as if you found one of your grandfather’s old pipes which had been heavily smoked […]

I was fortunate enough to have vacationed this summer in the United Kingdom. Split between Scotland and England, I managed to commandeer enough time away from the missus to seek out some tobacco shops and observe the general public presence (or lack thereof) of our pipe and cigar smoking counterparts across The Pond. In the […]

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Like it or not, all smokers are lumped together into a group, usually for the purpose of casting disdain upon us. This is especially true for the antis who site skewed “junk science” to prove that we’re just behind a monkey with a machine gun in terms of our ability to harm. But there are […]

Some people are very concerned about the moisture levels of their pipe tobacco, while for others it’s an afterthought. The degree of impact that the moisture level has will depend on a number of factors, including the smoker. To begin with, the initial humidity level of pipe tobacco tends to be in the range of […]

The single most viewed page on Talking Tobacco is my article “Pipe Filters Explained”. When I wrote that, I didn’t really pay attention to an interesting subject – When is a filter not a filter? In my previous article, I addressed the kinds of filters that are meant to be used in a specific kind […]

I’ve never made a pipe, myself, but I know plenty of pipe makers, and each one uses slightly different methods. For most people, especially for those without a well-equipped workshop, the easiest way to try your hand at making a pipe is to buy a hobby block. These are pre-drilled briar blocks that have a […]

I’ve been a big fan of Perique since I started smoking a pipe 40 years ago. I was fascinated by the dark, sweet aroma of it in a jar, and enjoyed what it did to a blend even more. I’ve made well over 100 blends in those 40 years, and probably 30 or more have […]

We recently looked at our Russ’ Monthly Blends, and noticed that sales had slowed down, so we ran an email to let folks know that we would be phasing them out. Not only did we sell a lot of those blends after the email hit, we also began receiving a lot of phone calls and […]

Ideally, this post should be written by Dan Chlebove since he does all the restoration of our estate pipes, but we’ve recently gotten in so many new estates that he can’t even take the time to write lately, so I’m taking up the mantle to give you pointers, and also to tell you what you […]